Following an announcement from the Trump administration that it is granting emergency use authorization for "convalescent plasma" for coronavirus patients, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has come up with an ingenious reason to condemn the move.
NBC News quotes Dr. Howard Koh who called the decision "a disservice" to health researchers, adding that, "investigators have had challenges enrolling patients [in plasma trials] to begin with, and this announcement will make it even harder, if not impossible."
The safety of using plasma from people who have recovered from coronavirus to treat those in serious or moderate condition is not under question. Apparently for Dr. Koh, proving the efficacy of the treatment is more important than allowing people to access this potentially life-saving treatment; on the flipside, he appears to be saying that in the interests of scientific research, people should be denied the treatment and may die as a result.